Trial courts must not frame suicide abetment charge mechanically, says SC
This story was originally published at 23:05 IST on 17 January 2025
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NEW DELHI – The Supreme Court on Friday said trial courts should exercise great caution and circumspection and not adopt a "play it safe" attitude and mechanically frame charges of abetment of suicide when the probe agency has shown utter disregard for ingredients of Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code.
A bench of Justice Abhay S. Oka and Justice K.V. Viswanathan said the apex court had repeatedly pointed to the higher threshold mandated by law for Section 306 to be applied by probe agencies. They said it appears that the section continues to be too readily and casually used by police.
"While the persons involved in genuine cases where the threshold is met should not be spared, the provision should not be deployed against individuals only to assuage the immediate feelings of the distraught family of the deceased," the court said. The conduct of the proposed accused and the deceased, and their interactions and conversations before the person's death should be approached from a practical point of view and not divorced from the day-to-day realities of life, it said.
The bench said hyperbole employed in conversations between two people should not, without anything more, be glorified as instigation to end one's life. "It is time the investigating agencies are sensitised to the law laid down by this court under Section 306 so that persons are not subjected to the abuse of process of a totally untenable prosecution," the apex court said.
The court rejected an order of the Madhya Pradesh High Court declining the plea of a person named Mahendra Awase to discharge him from an abetment-of-suicide charge. The case had its genesis from the death by suicide of a man named Ranjeet Chauhan, who had said Awase had harassed him in connection with a loan for which Chauhan had stood guarantor. End
Reported by Surya Tripathi
Edited by Rajeev Pai
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